“If you can believe Microsoft, over 100 million Windows 8 licenses have been sold so far,” Gene Steinberg writes for The tech Night Owl. “This number is consistent with the initial uptake of Windows 7, so you have to wonder how these figures are being collected, since PC sales continue to decline.”
“Microsoft earns most of its keep selling software licenses to OEMs, who bundle Windows with a new PC, any PC. So, yes, I suppose it’s possible that Microsoft has booked 100 million sales into its ledgers. But that doesn’t mean that 100 million copies of Windows 8, or anything close to that number, are in the hands of end users,” Steinberg writes. “It may also be true that there are tens of millions of unsold PCs in the channel. But that doesn’t matter to Microsoft, since a sale is a sale even if nobody is actually using the product.”
Steinberg writes, “This is similar to the IDC survey reporting that the percentage of Android tablets sold now exceeds the iPad, which is left with less than 40% of the market. Whereas Apple reports real sales, most of the other companies are reporting units shipped. It’s very easy to rack up a couple of million or so of each model just to reach all the resellers and distributors. It doesn’t mean all that product is actually sold, and it would be curious to see how many are eventually disposed of at fire sales, or returned to the manufacturer, depending on their return policies.”
Read more in the full article here.
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